1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a graph processing system which prepares and displays graphs, and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for setting graph definition items to define the appearance of a graph in an interactive manner, i.e., for newly setting graph definition items or changing the setting of old graph definition items in an interactive manner.
2. Description of the Related Art
Graphs or charts are used to express, for example, statistical numeric data in various fields. Recently, multifarious forms of graphs are available so that a user selectively uses one or more proper forms of graphs according to the purpose.
In this respect, it is demanded that graph processing systems aided by a computer or the like should be able to not only prepare and display multifarious forms of graphs but also easily set the fine appearance of each graph. It is therefore necessary to finely set many items to define the appearance or the like of each graph.
To set items to define the appearance or the like of a graph, i.e., to execute new setting or alteration of setting, the definition items are generally set using a menu system in an interactive manner. This requires the preparation of menus which allow the fine setting many definition items for the appearances or the like of individual graphs.
In a conventional graph processing system, definition items for individual graphs are held in a graph processing section graph by graph. Therefore, a menu-based interactive editing function exists for each graph, so that to newly set or change the definition items for the appearance or the like of a graph, the interactive editing function which matches with the form of that graph should be invoked.
In executing the graph processing of three types of graphs, a step-formed graph(hereinafter referred to "step graph"), a bar graph and a scatter graph, for example, those three types of graphs are prepared and displayed in a step graph preparing/display section, a bar graph preparing/display section and a scatter graph preparing/display section respectively. Likewise, there are three menu-based interactive editing functions for setting (newly setting or altering the setting of) the definition items for those three graphs, an interactive editing function for step graphs, an interactive editing function for bar graphs and an interactive editing function for scatter graphs, for the respective types of graphs.
In this case, interactive control for allowing an operator to perform an interactive input operation is commonly executed for the three types of graphs, but the menu-based interactive editing function and the graph preparing/display process are executed for each graph.
As mentioned above, the conventional graph processing system executes the menu-based interactive editing function and the graph preparing/display process graph by graph. To add a new graph processing function or add a new definition item for any graph for which a graph processing function already exists, therefore, a new interactive editing function should be added or the processing content of the associated interactive editing function should be altered. In this case, the memory capacity inevitably increases to hold information about the added or changed processing content.